The Ramrodders Part 23

Spinney did not relish the merriment which followed that sally.

"You've outgrown that coat of arms, then, in these days," he retorted.

"They all know you by a different stripe since you set the other chap at work, Squire Thornton. And the pendulum of power is swinging the other way! The people are behind _me_. You'd better get aboard." His style of humor depended most on its effrontery. He held out one of his badges.

"Better put it on," he advised. "Get aboard with the rush! They're all for 'Honest Arba.'"

The Duke stepped forward and presented his breast.

"Pin it on, Arba. When a man shifts his business and is introducing a brand-new line of goods, different from what he ever carried before, he needs all the advertising he can get. Pin it on!"

But Mr. Spinney did not pin it on. He had been sure that the old man would indignantly refuse, and his discomfiture was evident.

"You're showing your regular disposition, I see," he growled. "Grabbing everything you can get hold of. But a joke is a joke--let this one rest right here! Thornton, I say it here to your face, where all the boys can hear me: the people want a change in this State. I am not going behind a door to talk with you--that's been done too much! I stand in the open and say it! Open fighting after this--that's my code. I fight for the people. The people shall be put wise and kept wise to all that's going on."

"It's a good plan," counselled the Duke, unperturbed. "I see I can't tell you anything about advertising." He tapped a badge on the breast of a man near him.

"I'm for the people!" shouted Spinney. "The old wagon needs a new wheel-horse. I don't insist I'm the right one--or the only one. I merely say I'm willing to take hold and haul, if the people want me to. I offer myself, if no better one is found."

The crowd applauded that sentiment generously.

Thornton did not lose his amiability--his tolerant yet irritating good-humor.

"Speaking of wheel-horses, Arba--a man up my way started out to buy a horse the other day. He found a black one that suited--but the man who owned that horse was mighty honest, as most of my const.i.tuents are. 'You don't want him,' he told the man. 'He's too blamed slow.' 'That doesn't hurt him a bit for me,' said the buyer. 'I want him to mate another black horse to haul my hea.r.s.e. I'm an undertaker!' 'Then you certainly don't want him,' insisted the fellow. 'The _living_ can _wait_, but the _dead_ have got to be _buried_.'"

The Duke had made his way out of the crowd before the laughter ceased.

"Apply it to suit, Arba!" he called over his shoulder.

Arm in arm with his grandson, the Duke traversed the lobby and went up the broad stairs to the State Committee headquarters--double parlors on the floor above. The men who were sitting in the main parlor saluted the old man in the offhand manner of intimates. He drew his grandson into the privacy of the rear room.

"Now, my boy, get your hat, take a carriage and meet General Waymouth at the nine o'clock train. I've had him on the telephone. He's coming here to-night. Between us, he's grown lukewarm on our proposition. I want you to talk with him after you meet him. Take your time on the way from the station."

"I'm a pretty poor agent to send on such a job as that," said Harlan, deprecatingly.

"You're just the one," insisted the old man. "Don't you suppose I knew what I was doing when I took you with me that night? Talk for the young men of this State! He's tired of politics and politicians. I am, myself, sometimes. He's got to dwelling on the political side. Get it out of his mind. Thank G.o.d, you don't know enough politics to talk it to him! You can talk from your heart, boy. The younger generation in this State does want a change. I realize it. But that change has got to be tempered with political wisdom. It must be managed through politics. I'll attend to that part. It's your task to make Vard Waymouth see that he ought to stand. You can do it. Begin with him where you left off."

Harlan hesitated.

"Well?" inquired the Duke, a bit petulantly.

"I've been used to talking straight out to you, grandfather. I'm willing to help as far as it's in my poor power. But I want you to tell me that I'm not being used as a decoy-duck in this thing."

"I reckon you'd better explain that, son," said the Duke, stiffly.

"It's your own fault that I'm saying a word about it. But you did some talking after we came away from General Waymouth's house. It wasn't so much what you said; it was what you intimated. I believe in General Waymouth. But if I'm any judge of what has been framed up, he isn't going to be allowed to do what he wants to do."

"Did I say so?"

"No. But you did say that he would play the game with the chips that are on the table, not with sugar-plums."

"And you construe that to mean that I'm pulling him into this thing so as to be able to work him in the interests of the machine, eh?" inquired the Duke, putting into brutal speech even more than his grandson's vague suspicions suggested. "Now, look here! You remember Pod McClintock and his epileptic fits? You know he fell into a barbed-wire fence in a fit, and told around afterward how he had been to heaven, and the devil met him on his way back and clawed him for spite? Well, now don't you go to imitating Pod. There's more or less barbed wire in politics--any man gets afoul of it. But don't lay it to the devil. That will be elevating accidents onto too high a plane. If Vard Waymouth is the next Governor of this State there'll be some wire fences that he won't be able to sit on. There'll be too many barbs. We'll put top rails onto all the fences we can. But you can't make any fence safe for those that are bound to b.u.t.t head-first into barbed wire. Waymouth isn't the kind to do any b.u.t.ting. I'll tell you this, Harlan, and it's straight: if I help to make Waymouth our next Governor, I'll help to make him a good one--provided he needs any of my help in that line. Now go and attend to your business."

There were few at the railroad station, and those few paid little heed to General Waymouth when he stepped down from the train. The young man greeted him with eager respect, and explained why he was there.

The General took his arm and walked to the carriage. "This is restful.

I'm glad to see you here," he said. "But to-morrow," he added, bitterly, "if I am fool enough to be dragged back into politics, I'll be met wherever I go by men that fawn and men that seek--by that crowd I thought and hoped I had escaped forever. I was very hasty, Mr. Thornton, when I gave my word to your grandfather. I fear I must hold you responsible just because you were present." He smiled as the young man took his seat opposite. "But you const.i.tuted a new element in politics.

I had been having my dreams in the peace of my home--and one of those dreams was to see the young men of this State breaking away from the political bondage of the fathers. But I'm afraid I am older than I thought. I have an old man's fears. I have had enough--too much--of the contact of men. Now this next idea is fanciful--another proof that I'm old--in my dotage, perhaps." His tone was gently playful. "I told you the other day that you seemed to typify the young strength of the State.

So I'm going to appeal to you, young man--I cannot very well appeal to the rest, for they are not in the secret--I'm going to beg of you, Mr.

Second Generation, to release me from my promise. What say you?--and remember that I'm an old man who has fought the good fight and is very weary."

"I've got to confess there isn't much wit and humor in me--there doesn't seem to be just now," stammered Harlan, after groping some moments for suitable reply to what he accepted as badinage.

"Oh, I don't want jest in answer to that, sir," protested the General.

"I am in earnest." But his tone was still a bit whimsical. "You know, even so great a man as Caesar consulted the oracle and the omens and the soothsayers. Why should not I practice a little divination? Now answer me, young man--or I'll say, young _men_ of the State?"

"Yet I can't think you really mean that, General," protested Harlan, wholly confused by this persistent banter.

"Call it in fun, call it in earnest, still I demand my answer." General Waymouth was serious now. "I came here resolved to tell Thelismer, face to face, that I could not sacrifice the last strength of my life in the way he has asked. But when you met me at the station all my ambitions for this newer generation, as I have dreamed them, came up in me. My boy, this State of ours is in a bad way. In one respect it is especially bad. We have one solemn law in our const.i.tution that is made our own political football and the laughing-stock of the nation. We forbid the sale of liquor. Look at that saloon we are pa.s.sing at this moment! It is a law that affects nearly every person in our State--comes near to every one, directly or indirectly. The manner of its breaking, publicly and protected by politics, has bred disrespect for all law in the boys who are growing up. And they are the ones who will run our State when we oldsters are gone. I'll not say anything about the other reforms that conditions are calling for. There's _one_--the big one that flaunts itself in our faces. I'm of the old school, Mr. Thornton. I don't believe in the prohibitory principle as applied to the liquor question.

It hasn't the right spirit behind it--it is invoked by bigots and fanatics who refuse helpful compromise. But it's a law--our law! Every day that pa.s.ses under present conditions adds its little to the d.a.m.nation of the moral principle in our boys and girls, growing up with eyes and ears open. G.o.d, I wish I were twenty years younger! But I'm old enough to have fantastic notions; old enough to insist on an answer to my question, in spite of what you may think of my mental condition. Will you release me from that promise? I made it to the young men of this State--in my disgust at conditions, in my pa.s.sion to do something to clean out this nest!"

The lights from the brilliant shop-windows shone into the carriage.

Harlan leaned forward. The General's face was serious.

"Still, I can't understand it!" he cried. "I'm only--"

"I tell you, you typify for me at this moment the young men of my State!

I choose to decide in this fashion. Do you feel that an honest Governor would help your self-respect?"

"I can answer that question, sir. I believe in you. Ever since you promised my grandfather that you would accept the nomination I have depended on that promise. I know what you can do for our State. If you are not to be our next Governor the heart has gone out of me, and the young men of this State have lost their best hope."

The carriage wheels had grated to a standstill against the curb in front of the big hotel. The buzz of the crowded hive came out to them through the open windows. General Waymouth glanced that way and frowned. But when he turned and looked into the glowing face of the young man opposite, his countenance cleared slowly. His smile returned. There was a hint of pathos in that smile, but his eyes shone. He put out his hand and took Harlan's in a firm clasp.

"That sounds like my call to duty, Mr. Thornton," he declared. "I listen. I obey!" Then he dropped his earnestness. "Let this little talk remain a secret between us. These practical politicians wouldn't understand. A bit of an old man's weakness; perhaps that was it. A little eccentric, eh?"

The driver had opened the carriage door.

"I believe I understand, sir. I do now. And I'm sorry."

The remark was a bit cryptic, but the General understood.

"And you'll appreciate better what this means to me when you are as old as I. But that's the last of talk like this, my boy. There's one more fight still in me. We'll just go ahead and find out how much honesty is left in this State--and you shall help me hunt for it, for old eyes need the help of young ones, and I'm going outside the politicians to find honesty."

He led the way across the pavement to a side door of the hotel.

"We'll go in this way, quietly," he said. "I haven't any appet.i.te for that kind of a stew just yet."

CHAPTER XV